The fire fight moves online

It's official: you can now contact the Fire & Rescue Services on the web. Not to report an emergency - "get out, stay out, dial 999" is still the advice - but to conduct non-urgent business such as applying for a licence to store fireworks.

Visitors to fire.gov.uk can find their local fire and rescue service and take a 15-minute test to see if they have "the potential to be a successful firefighter". (Clue: the test is more interested in people skills than in physical strength or lung capacity.) People worried that their children may be pyromaniacs can arrange a visit from a fire adviser.

Fire Gateway, built at a cost of £2.2m for the Department for Communities and Local Government, is notable for other reasons. It was launched last month a year behind schedule, and 15 months after the deadline under which all government services had to be available online.

It appears a bizarre addition to the government's inventory at a time when policy is to cut 2,500 .gov.uk sites back to two all-purpose portals - Directgov for citizens and Businesslink for businesses. Especially as every fire authority in England already has its own website.

The site's creators say it serves a valuable purpose. "It creates a central area for the public to access information 24/7 and, for the first time, provides a secure network on a national basis making it easier to communicate securely between the 46 fire authorities in England," said IT contractor Parity. One reason for the secure network is to exchange information with organisations dealing with social services and crime - people who start fires and are most at risk of being harmed by them are generally known to other agencies. A one-stop portal will also help landlords and event organisers comply with new regulations, making them responsible for fire precautions.

Nonetheless, the portal does appear a throwback to the heroic age of e-government targets, in which teams of civil servants and contractors beavered away to "e-enable" every conceivable function of government regardless of evidence that people would use it.

Fire Gateway's delayed launch appears to have been caused by political rather than technical difficulties. Its gestation coincided with a long-running row over government plans to rationalise the number of fire stations and control rooms. Whether it will lead to a rationalisation in the number of individual fire service websites remains to be seen.

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